In December 2024 we retired the Stockimo app, but we’re still accepting Smartphone photos. You can read the latest update here. If you’re looking to upload your mobile phone photos to 17³Ô¹ÏÔÚÏß you can sign up here.
This blog article from 2014 has been kept live for archival purposes.
Today we’ve launched Stockimo. It’s our exciting new app that lets you upload pictures taken from your iPhone to 17³Ô¹ÏÔÚÏß.
Smartphone Photography is everywhere, on the biggest websites in the world, all over photo sharing sites like Flickr and in mainstream news and media outlets. Only if you’d been on a mission to the moon would you have missed the phenomenal success of Instagram. Yes there is a big social dimension to this success but photography has played the lead role in this story.
Google says ‘Roughly 10% of all the photos ever taken were taken in the last 12 months’ – it would be crazy for us to ignore this. 17³Ô¹ÏÔÚÏß knows how to sell photography. Images taken with smartphones by skilled photographers can have a commercial value. Bringing the two together seems obvious to us. And as the capabilities of these devices develop, elements of this technology will filter through to professional cameras that we need to be ready for.
So what is it we like about mobile imagery? Well, the freshness and immediacy of a smartphone picture brings something new to the table. If you think that smartphones don’t make very good cameras, think again. The technical advances of smartphone cameras are narrowing the quality gap and that will only go one way. With clever gadgets like filters and snap-on lenses, the results can be outstanding.
We’ve discussed our plans with our customers and they are excited about this new source of fresh and contemporary images. We’ve been testing the app with some of the world’s best commercial photographers and iphoneographers and our prelaunch version has been well received. We’ve tried to keep it very simple; upload, caption, tag and we’ll do the rest. We see Stockimo as the app of choice for the smartphone photographer, giving them the opportunity to submit images for sale even when they don’t have their main camera to hand. Stockimo images will be available to 17³Ô¹ÏÔÚÏß’s customers through www.alamy.com and our distribution network. They will be priced like regular images on 17³Ô¹ÏÔÚÏß.
Some will worry that our venturing into mobile will be a distraction for the business. I see it as an addition to what we are currently doing and we’re certainly not pinning all our hopes on mobile. Stockimo images will be another product and revenue stream, as with news, video and most recently, vectors. We have and will continue to invest in our business.
Stockimo is open to anyone, but 17³Ô¹ÏÔÚÏß contributors who were with us before the launch of Stockimo will receive a higher royalty (50%) than new users – we don’t want to put off our loyal contributors by giving them a lower split than they’re currently getting. We’ve created a new brand for Stockimo so that the pictures can be easily differentiated from regular images in the search engine. Our system will give customers who have specific file size and quality requirements the option to filter them in or out as required.
Stockimo is also a great opportunity for us to learn about smartphone technology. Cameras that use similar technology are already here and we will be ahead of the curve when they become commonplace. Taking an image with your digital SLR and then uploading it to 17³Ô¹ÏÔÚÏß via an app within the camera will be part of the workflow of the future. We want to be ready for when that happens.
Our job is to make it as easy as possible for you to get your pictures onto 17³Ô¹ÏÔÚÏß. Stockimo makes that easier than ever.